The Daily Workshop Report
by Robert Sheard (TMF Sheard)

LEXINGTON, KY. (Oct. 28, 1997)

Scroll to the bottom for year-to-date Growth and Value Screen results.

So how has this week's drop and bounce affected the returns for the Keystone Portfolio? Let's look.

For those of you new to this approach, it begins with the 100 largest American stocks. I trim that field by including only those stocks with a Value Line Timeliness ranking of 1 or 2, which usually leaves us about thirty stocks. To choose the final ten (or five or fifteen, or however many you wish to include), rank the stocks by total return over the last six months (a measure of Relative Strength.)

The stocks I selected using this approach at the end of October 1996 have generated the following returns through this afternoon (with three trading days left for the twelve-month cycle):

  49% Keystone Portfolio
  30% S&P 500 Index

  53% Intel (INTC)
 138% Compaq (CPQ)
   8% Monsanto (MTC)
  21% Gillette (G)
  28% Campbell (CPB)
  28% Citicorp (CCI)
  37% Medtronic (MDT)
  72% Travelers Group (TRV)
  94% Microsoft (MSFT)
  14% Coca-Cola (KO)

The current rankings as of Friday (10/24) are:

Dell Computer (DELL)
Compaq Computer (CPQ)
Computer Associates (CA)
Cisco Systems (CSCO)
Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER)
Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB)
AirTouch Communic. (ATI)
Schering-Plough (SGP)
Pfizer Inc. (PFE)
Travelers Group (TRV)
Warner-Lambert (WLA)
Texas Instruments (TXN)
Int'l Business Mach. (IBM)
BankAmerica Corp. (BAC)
Home Depot (HD)

After the current portfolio closes out on Friday night, I'll jump ahead to the portfolio I began tracking in April using the same method and start a new one with the 10/31 rankings. From that point on, I'll soon have a portfolio for each new month, effectively tracking all twelve possibilities for starting dates. I don't suspect it to make any difference when one starts using a strategy like this, but I want the data to confirm that as I go forward. Fool on!

Monthly Growth Screens
(Jan. 3 to present)
81.13%  Relative Strength  
30.29%  Investing for Growth  
26.32%  EPS Plus RS  
23.24%  S&P 500 Index  
16.40%  Formula 90  
14.56%  YPEG Potential  
11.08%  Unemotional Growth  
10.34%  Low Price/Sales  

Annual Value Screens
(Jan. 1 to present)
21.78%  Dow Combo  
21.00%  Foolish Four  
20.84%  Dogs of the Dow  
20.73%  Unemotional Value  
20.73%  Beating the Dow  
20.25%  Beating the S&P  
16.28%  Dow Jones Ind Avg